Justice Delayed But Not Denied
The quality of justice in our nation is still distorted by a persistent racial bias, but justice sometimes prevails. The conviction of the last of the police officers charged in the charged in the Danzinger Bridge killings in New Orleans following Katrina is one example. In the aftermath of Katrina, officers shot and killed two unarmed African American civilians, refused to transport one victim to the hospital, and shot another who attempted to come to the man's. Finally the police conspired to frame another unarmed civilian for the killings.
Like most trials involving police officers charged with assaulting or killing African American civilians, the trial was politically and racially charged. But this time the police weren't treated as they were above the law, as in countless other cases, and the jury voted to convict. You can read about the trial and convictions here:
And in Mississippi the convicted killer of civil rights workers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, James Ford Seale, 76, died in prison this Tuesday. Seale almost got away with the murders, he was only tried and convicted recently and served four years of the life sentences he received.
James Ford Seale, a long-time member of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The bodies of Dee and Moore were uncovered in 1964 along with several hundred others as the FBI searched for the bodies of Goodmanm Schwerner and Chaney. The dogged persistence of local activists who pressed federal authorities to bring Seale to trial on federal charges finally resulted in his conviction forty years later.
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